Stencil Graffiti

(technique, 1968-present)

Stencil graffiti is growing in popularity worldwide. This street art can be a few simple words, or a grand scale art piece. Because it is cheap, quick, and easy, this style of graffiti has grown tremendously. More street artists are turning to stencil arts speed, efficiency, and neatness as a means of expression. All it takes is a piece of cardboard, an X-Acto knife, and a can of spray paint to pose an idea or tell a story with the potential to change the gait of pedestrians and make them stop and think. Stencil graffiti includes images or text cut into paper, cardboard, plastic, or other material such that, when painted over, the image is transferred onto the surface, they are like political cartoons.

In Stencil Graffiti, the first book to examine comprehensively this design phenomenon, Tristan Manco traces the history of stencil art and provides an exciting and thorough overview of the medium. His introduction traces the history of the form, from cave paintings, Chinese silks and Egyptian pyramids to Art Nouveau pochoirs and the Pop art forerunners of stencil art, and then proceeds to a specific history of Stencil Graffiti, tracing its genesis in the Italian fascist propaganda of the 1940s and Basque and Mexican political protests of the 1970s, and examining Stencil Style (typography, functional stencilling, street signage, advertising, decoration). The core of the book is the state of Stencil Graffiti today, from Pop Art to individual street artists’ work plus spreads arranged by theme/subject.